BleepingComputer.com: External Harddrive : Strange Problem

Hello. I'm having a baffling problem with a 650gb Maxtor Basics Desktop external HD. I'm running Windows XP.

All was well till a couple of weeks ago when i rather embarrassingly blew my internal HD as a result of vacuuming. With a new internal installed i was up and running again. 2 of my 3 external HD's worked fine , but i had a problem with the 650gb Maxtor. Although it showed up as Drive F in My Computer , when i clicked on it i got the message ''The Disk in Drive F is not formatted. Do you want to Format it now .'' Obviously not as i had 200gb of data on it. It also showed as having 0 bytes Used Space : 0 bytes Free Space and the file System as being RAW.

Googling this problem came up with a few suggestions , and the obvious one seemed to work. Turn off the PC and connect the external to a different USB Port. When i restarted my PC all was well . Drive F showed up as 200gb used space , 430gb free space and i could access all the files on it as per normal. Problem solved i thought. Wrong. Next time i turned off my PC and rebooted , i was back to square one , ie Drive F was RAW etc. If i turned off my PC again and connected the external to a different Port all was well again .

And that's where i am now. To get the external to work i have to disconnect it every time i turn off my PC and connect it to a different Port.

I've done everything i can think of to solve the problem . I've reformatted the Drive , i've run Seagate Tools on it , nothing makes any difference. I'm 99% sure this is not a problem with my USB Ports , as i've experimented with my 2 other externals which work fine.

One thing that may be of note. When i go to Disc Management , the externals which are working normally display as Healthy/Active . The one with the problem just shows as Healthy.

Any help or advice on this problem would be much appreciated.

Check the manufacturers website for diagnostic utilities.

See if you can back up the data on a different external on one of the times it works.

It might be leading towards a disk failure thats permanent.

Perhaps once you backup the data, try reformatting the NTFS.

Thanks for the reply. I think i've done all of those suggestions. I've moved all the data to a different external, reformatted the drive , and run Seagate tools.

This seems to be a unique problem.

Is there a conflict with the assigned drive letters?

You can goto disk management and change the drive letter, perhaps that will resolve conflict issues.

No, that's not the problem. I've created a new partition on it , but again it only shows up when i switch the PC off and switch the USB lead to a different port.

The drive might be dying. I think the utility for checking that would tell you though.

Have you checked the data and power cables to the drive? Check for wear/tear and proper seating in both the drive and motherboard. Maybe try a different power cable and data cable all together. Use a workling hard drives cables.

RAW file system situations...do not reflect necessarily on the drive itself, but rather on the partition/file system you created on the hard drive.

Windows is saying that it cannot make heads or tails of the partition.

CHKDSK error message - The type of the filesystem is RAW - http://www.z-a-recovery.com/art-raw-filesystem.htm

RAW Volume (Quietman) - http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=36698

Louis

Thanks Louis , but the new partition isn't the problem , as the problem was there before i created it.

Today i took it round to a mate's to see how it worked on another PC. I expected it be OK when first plugged in and it was. I wasn't sure what would happen when it was left plugged in and the PC rebooted . Well , it worked again , which it won't do on my PC after rebooting.

So it appears that there's nothing wrong with the HD itself , the problem lies somewhere within my system. I've read somewhere that uninstalling USB drivers may help , but according to Computer Management they're all working normally.

AFAIK...there is no connection whatever...between a RAW file system/partition...and another drive/device.

You say that it "worked" on another system...does that mean that it booted? Seems highly unlikely. If "worked" means that you were able to see files on it...I think that might misleading.

http://www.raw-file-system.com/

Louis

It's a bit complicated. The HD now has 2 partitions. The first , only a few gb , shows up as raw. The second , 580gb , which shows up as a different drive -I - is the one that worked fine on my mates PC , ie i could see and play files.

This post has been edited by wolfie7: 12 July 2011 - 08:01 PM

<<but i had a problem with the 650gb Maxtor. Although it showed up as Drive F in My Computer , when i clicked on it i got the message ''The Disk in Drive F is not formatted. Do you want to Format it now .'' Obviously not as i had 200gb of data on it. It also showed as having 0 bytes Used Space : 0 bytes Free Space and the file System as being RAW.>>

Seems to me that there is a contradiction somewhere.

Louis